The community around Simon has grown since the move, so this is a good time to join in for those interested in improving Simon or KDE's other accessibility projects. The Simon Listens e.V. is also accepting tax-deductible donations (translated from German) to further support development of their software.

Simon's lead developer Peter Grasch shares his experience migrating to the KDE ecosystem.

Adam Trickett reports on his experiences of setting up KDE for his father in Desktop Adapted for Dad. His article on The Linux Box shows the range of features KDE has for someone with poor eye-sight and reduced hand coordination. He concludes by saying "modern Linux desktops are highly configurable, and with thought can be adapted for most people".

The KDE Accessibility team is in the process of integrating speech synthesis into KDE. Not only does this mean better support for visually-impaired and speech-impaired users, but the new features should also prove for a fun desktop experience overall. An important milestone has been reached with the recent release of the KDE Text-to-Speech System (ktts).

With the new Qt-ATK bridge, Qt/KDE applications will integrate seamlessly with existing assistive technologies on GNU/Linux desktops as well as other Unixes that support Sun's accessibility framework. First snapshots can be expected in early 2004, more information and screenshots can be found here.

The 3rd Linux Accessibility conference will take place on March 20 to 21 in the La Jolla room of the LAX Marriot. KDE-related activites include an update on the progress of the KDE Accessibility Project and a discussion on KDE accessibility and interoperability.